Something that I remembered reading which worked when I had a HDD die on me 18 months ago with the same symptoms: sometimes cooling the HDD will let it be coaxed into working again for a limited time - it depends on the reason for the failure, obviously. So I put the laptop in a plastic bag and left it in the fridge (not the deepfreeze!) overnight. Rather to my surprise, the next day it booted and ran long enough to copy the important stuff to a USB stick before the HD went AWOL again, this time permanently.
Last edited by WorstGW; 31st October 2011 at 14:13.
Reason: Expanded background.